I do not like guns. I do not own one. I can count on one hand the number of times I have fired one. In my opinion, if hunters want to be true sportsmen, they should give the deer guns so they can shoot back.
Owning a gun for self defense is problematic unless you have extensive military or police training, have no children or teenagers in your house and never argue with any family members or anyone else. Otherwise, the probability of a horrible gun accident is much higher than the chance you will ever successfully defend yourself against home invaders, armed robbers or car jackers. Even a skilled marksman has difficulty repelling an armed criminal and if you live in a liberal state like Connecticut, you could be arrested for defending yourself and then sued and bankrupted by the criminal himself if you injure him.
But weapon control has been used all through human history to keep the powerful in control. The Hawaiian nobility required commoners to prostate themselves before them and had the right to rape a commoner with impunity. How was this enforced? Spear control. Any commoner who made a spear was executed.
Asian tyrants banned swords, bows and arrows and virtually all weapons so their minions could brutalize and overtax their subjects. Commoners responded by developing weaponless self-defense techniques that are still popular to this day – judo, karate and taekwondo among others. …
Our democracy is an aberration. Since dawn of human history, armed physically powerful men have terrorized the masses in return for favors from the ruling class. Medieval knights received lands and titles that exempted them from paying taxes. Today, FBI agents, prosecutors and police receive decent salaries, Cadillac health insurance and secure pensions. It would take a brave person in one of these jobs to defy the ruling class and risk losing everything. It is much easier “to follow orders” as Adolf Eichmann would say.
Yes, tens of thousands of people are killed by gun violence in the United States and better gun control would probably prevent this – as it does in other countries.
But once the right to bear arms is lost, Americans could have the choice of being bullied and imprisoned by the ruling class’s enforcers or capitulating to serfdom. The founding fathers were correct to give Americans this right and it should never be abridged.
